The Joker (originally known as Jack Napier) is a recurring character on the television series Knight of Gotham. He serves as the main antagonist of several seasons, and can be considered, for all intents and purposes, the main antagonist of the series as a whole, as he becomes the most recurring enemy Batman faces, as well as his archenemy.

Before his transformation into the Joker, Jack Napier was a hitman and high-ranking enforcer working for Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, and was frequently sent to assissinate the Caped Crusader. He frequently worked alongside Eddie Martinez, a close friend and rival of his. Following Falcone's arrest, Napier offered his services to Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, better known as "The Penguin", who assumed leadership of Gotham City's organized crime after Falcone was captured. Later on still, during the Gotham gang war, he developed a second identity as a masked crime lord known as The Red Hood and formed a crime gang of his own, with Eddie Martinez as his second-in-command, while still operating as an assassin. In the hopes of taking control of the Gotham underworld, he formed an alliance with The Riddler, who secretly masterminded the gang war to begin with. However, during an attempted robbery of the ACE Chemicals Factory, Napier fell into a vat of chemicals during a chaotic fight with Batman and was thought to have been killed. However, he was not killed; he emerged from the factory's outside canal with his skin bleached chalk white, and his lips dyed red and his hair green, and his psyche completely destroyed, thus turning him into the homicidal psychopath he is today.

Contents

Biography

Before Knight of Gotham

Very little is known of Jack Napier's life before he arrived in Gotham City. It is known that at one point he served as a freelance mercenary, operating worldwide, and has had extensive training in the use of all types of guns, firearms, knives, and bombs. He is a exceptional fighter and also has some knowledge of martial arts. It is believed that he once worked for some foreign government or mercenary firm, though he has neither confirmed or denied this.

Several years before Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham City, Napier arrived in the city and came under the employ of Carmine Falcone, the city's most prominent gangster. He has had the distinction of being Falcone's top assassin, to such a point that he was considered a member of Falcone's inner circle.

Knight of Gotham

Season One

Jack Napier before his transformation into the Joker.

Season Two

Season Three

Season Four

Trivia

David Tennant is the first actor to portray a live-action version of the Joker in a non-movie setting since Cesar Romero in the 1960's (unless one were to count Roger Stoneburner's brief portrayal of the Joker in the pilot of the short-lived Birds of Prey television series.)

His original name is a reference to the 1989 Batman film, where the Joker (as portrayed by Jack Nicholson) was originally known as Jack Napier, and his origin story is similar to his origin in Batman: The Animated Series, as in that setting he was also a hitman for a prominent gangster (and his original is also given as Jack Napier as well.)

Early drafts of several Knight of Gotham scripts had the Joker's original name be "Jack White" instead of "Jack Napier", and he was related to Warren White, who would later become the Great White Shark.